Vegan car interior: 6 EVs' seats and steering wheels compared

Not completely, but the part you sit in can be. When BMW announced vegan interiors in 2022, it said the share of components containing traces of animal origin would fall below 1% in those BMW and MINI models, all of it out of sight, for example gelatine in protective coatings, lanolin in paint, tallow in rubber-like parts and beeswax as a flux for paint.

In September 2021 Volvo said that, starting with the C40 Recharge, every new fully electric Volvo would be completely leather-free. The 2026 EX90, a fully electric SUV, is on Volvo’s US site with ventilated nappa leather offered in three of its four interior colors. The fourth, Zinc, is a wool blend, and the 2021 release had already said wool would stay. So the pledge tells you less than the upholstery name on the build you actually order.

What’s animal-derived in a car with a vegan interior

Inside the cabin, the seats and the steering wheel decide it. The synthetic upholsteries carry trade names rather than plain ones: Volvo’s Nordico is bio-attributed PVC on a recycled polyester backing, Ford calls ActiveX “a high-end synthetic seating material”, and Kia and Hyundai use SynTex and H-Tex. Volvo’s description of Nordico, PVC on polyester, is the kind of plastic our guide to what vegan leather is made of walks through. Kia’s and Hyundai’s pages don’t say what SynTex and H-Tex are made of, beyond Kia’s mention of recycled materials, which is why the wording around each name matters.

Outside the cabin, BMW’s examples are the only ones we found from a carmaker. Its 2022 release says that in its cars with fully vegan interiors, animal-derived raw materials would be found only in areas the customer can’t see, and it gives four examples: gelatine in protective coatings, lanolin in paints, tallow as an additive in elastomers and beeswax as a flux for paints. Lanolin is the wax that comes off sheep’s wool; our answer on whether lanolin is vegan covers the lip balms that list it. The same release offers a leather-free surface for the steering wheel, the part of the car your hands touch most. Hyundai and Kia describe plant-oil bio paint on some interior surfaces, from the IONIQ 5’s dashboard and door panels to the EV9’s door switch panels, but no other maker page we read says whether anything animal-derived is in a car’s paint or coatings. For every other car below, the answer covers the cabin only.

Six electric cars, read from the makers’ pages

All six are on their makers’ US sites. What each maker says on its own pages, read in October 2026:

Car	Seats with no animal material named	Animal material offered	Steering wheel	“Vegan” on the maker’s page
Polestar 3	WeaveTech, MicroTech	Nappa leather, wool	WeaveTech (heated wheel, Plus pack)	Yes
Kia EV9	SynTex, every trim listed	None as a trim, but “seat leather” in the ventilation text	SynTex	No
Tesla Model 3	Vegan leather, textile	None in the manual	Not stated	Yes, in the owner’s manual
Volvo EX30	Textile and Nordico, Nordico	Wool blend (Pine)	Not stated	No
Hyundai IONIQ 5	Cloth, H-Tex	None listed	H-Tex	No
Volvo EX90	Nordico, ventilated Nordico	Nappa leather, wool blend	Not stated	No

Polestar 3

Our pick, because Polestar is the only maker here whose page uses the word vegan for both the seats and a steering wheel. Its US interior page lists four upholsteries. WeaveTech is “a vegan, PVC-based leather alternative”, and the heated steering wheel, part of the Plus pack, comes clad in “vegan-friendly WeaveTech upholstery”. Bio-attributed MicroTech is described as a vegan alternative to leather. The other two are perforated Nappa leather from Bridge of Weir and animal welfare-certified wool, whose yarn Polestar says can be traced back to its farm of origin.

Leather, MicroTech and wool are each marked “Available as an upgrade”; WeaveTech is the one the page doesn’t mark that way. So WeaveTech is the vegan seat without an upgrade, MicroTech is the vegan upgrade, and the other two upgrades are the ones to refuse. Polestar’s 2022 note on the Polestar 3 seat labels called MicroTech standard, so check which one your build lists. The same note puts the wool yarn at 80% certified wool and 20% recycled content, so the warm, breathable option is still mostly sheep. Don’t tick the upholstery upgrade box without reading which of the three you’re getting.

Kia EV9

Every seat trim on Kia’s US specs page is SynTex, from the standard SynTex Seat Trim to the GT-Line version, and the steering wheel is SynTex-wrapped. Kia says the standard trim uses recycled materials. Then the ventilated-seat description says the fans circulate air “through perforations in the seat leather”. I’d ask the dealer which seat that sentence is about before signing anything. A Kia release on its Australian site says the company has pledged to phase out leather completely in all new products, and that Bio PU is in the EV9’s seats and interior coverings. The US page never says what SynTex is made of, or uses the word vegan.

Tesla Model 3

Tesla puts its answer in the owner’s manual rather than on the sales page. The North American Model 3 manual’s cleaning page says the seats are made of “a custom, sustainable, vegan leather”, and it gives separate instructions for vegan leather seats and for textile seats. Plain leather appears only in that comparison: the seats are “softer than leather”. The page has care advice for the steering wheel but doesn’t say what it is wrapped in, so that is the one question left for the showroom.

Volvo EX30

Three of the EX30’s four interiors contain no animal fiber on Volvo’s US page. Black is Nordico; Harvest and Indigo pair Nordico with textile that is 100% recycled polyester. Pine is the exception, with seat tops in a wool blend that’s 30% wool and 70% recycled polyester. If wool is the sticking point, our answer on whether wool is vegan covers it. The page mentions no leather anywhere and doesn’t use the word vegan either. Pick Black, Harvest or Indigo and skip Pine, however good the green looks.

Hyundai IONIQ 5

Hyundai’s US specs page lists stain-resistant cloth on the SE Standard Range and SE, and H-Tex trimmed seats on the SEL, XRT and Limited, with an H-Tex wrapped steering wheel on all five. No leather appears in the seating and trim rows. The catch is that Hyundai’s page doesn’t say what H-Tex is. It doesn’t say what the stain-resistant cloth is made of either, so ask about whichever trim you’re quoted.

Volvo EX90

In the Cardamom, Dawn and Charcoal interiors, the EX90 offers ventilated nappa leather, ventilated Nordico and Nordico. Zinc comes only in the wool blend, made with recycled polyester and wool, and for model year 2026 that wool interior is only available with the 6-seat configuration. Nordico is the one to ask for: Volvo describes it as bio-attributed PVC with a textile backing of 100% recycled polyester. If the car you’re quoted says nappa, it isn’t the leather-free Volvo the 2021 release described. If it says Zinc, it is leather-free and still not animal-free.

How to check the car you’re actually buying

Ask for the upholstery by its name, then ask what the steering wheel and the gear selector are wrapped in. Those are three different answers, and a dealer can know the first without knowing the other two.

Read the name for the animal in it. Nappa is leather. So is “eco-processed leather”: Hyundai’s February 2021 release revealing the IONIQ 5’s interior described seats clad in an eco-processed leather “dyed and treated with plant oil extractions from flaxseed”. The plant is in the dye. On both Volvo pages the wool shares a sentence with recycled polyester, which makes it easy to read past.

Treat animal welfare wording as a flag rather than a reassurance. Polestar uses it for the leather and the wool, never for WeaveTech or MicroTech, and Volvo’s 2021 release applies it to its wool supply chain. If animal welfare wording is attached to a specific upholstery, an animal went into it.

Should vegans drive at all?

The Vegan Society defines veganism as a way of living that seeks to exclude exploitation of animals “as far as is possible and practicable”.

The strict case starts with BMW’s own release, which says that even its cars with vegan interiors keep animal-derived material in hidden parts, and some vegans add that cars kill animals on the road, so owning one is a compromise however the seats are trimmed. The practical case says that for anyone without a bus or train that goes where they need to go, a car isn’t optional, and choosing the upholstery and the wheel is exactly the possible and practicable part.

Our line, and it is our line rather than a fact: if you need a car, the cabin is where the choice is real, so make it there and don’t pay extra for leather or wool. The coatings and rubber are beyond what a buyer can specify today, as far as anything we read shows.

Once the seats are synthetic, don’t treat them like leather. Our guide to cleaning vegan leather names the cleaner built for perforated car seats, and the leather conditioner whose maker says it isn’t for faux leather.